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As we all know, the field of customer experience is undergoing significant changes. Technology, data and the essential importance of customer experience are all making a profound impact on every customer-focused company. We are going to take a closer look at these disruptive forces, how they influence each other and, most importantly, how companies can effectively deal with them to create perfect customer experiences.

Unseen by customers, and generally underappreciated, it is the back office that makes sure the engines of your company are humming along. And when it doesn’t?

Customer interactions today produce an unprecedented amount of rich data, from a host of channels and across periods of time. That’s got to be a good thing, right? Yes, but.

The contact center infrastructure industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, providing unified connectivity solutions to contact centers as well as interactive voice response, automatic call distribution, Web Customer Service and Workforce Optimization. Contact centers today have to invest quite a lot in having (and maintaining) even a very basic infrastructure for medium sized operations, and this investment goes up and up for bigger operations.

The days where customers were whole-heartedly loyal to a specific business are a thing of the past. Your customers have become accustomed to getting what they need, when they need or want it. This means that business continuity is more important than ever to your contact center. Even a slight disruption in service can have costly implications. While you can now serve your customers around the clock, so can your competitors.

“Interactive Voice Response (IVR) ranks with taxation as one of the most disliked features ever created.” (Gartner) Enough has been said and written about IVR as a necessary evil in today’s contact center. The reality though can be quite different because wherever there is a problem, there is also an opportunity.

“People play differently when they are keeping score”… I nearly jumped out of my seat when this phrase was included in a speech at 2014 Interactions.  The philosophy is referenced in The 4 Disciplines of Execution series.  The words perfectly relay my sentiments on why QA scores matter!